Shubman Gill's calm exterior finally cracks as century roar lays bare rage fueled by captaincy pressure, selection flak

Shubman Gill let out a fierce roar, one that was remarkably similar to Virat Kohli's in 2018, and perhaps, both draw fitting parallels if looked at with context

Shubman Gill is a gentle person. He speaks softly, he is respectful of those around him, and even when he is scoring runs freely and quickly, he treats the ball with respect. He doesn’t smash the cover of it, not when he stands tall and pulls in front of mid-wicket or punches it square on the off-side with short-arm jabs, and not even when he dances down the track and deposits it over the straight-field boundary.

India's captain Shubman Gill, right, celebrates after scoring a century on day one of the second cricket test match between England and India (AP)

It was, therefore, somewhat surprising to hear the primal roar that escaped his throat when he reached three-figures at Edgbaston on Wednesday. It wasn’t Gill’s first Test hundred – he now has seven. It wasn’t even his first ton of the series – after all, just under a fortnight back, he made 147, his highest Test score, in his maiden hit as captain. So, what was the provocation for that ferocious yell that could have been heard in Bengaluru as loudly as in Birmingham?

Was it relief, you wondered? Was it just a release of pent-up emotion? Or was it a reaction to the events of the last few days culminating in the resting of Jasprit Bumrah and the continued non-inclusion of Kuldeep Yadav?

How do you react to the sustained criticism of what is construed as a defensive move by a team trailing 0-1 and yet unwilling to use the resources most equipped to take wickets? A century doesn’t hurt, does it?

Maybe there was a case for Bumrah to be rested, with a potentially more responsive surface awaiting him at Lord’s next week. After all, as Chris Woakes pointed out, there wasn’t a great amount of pace in the Edgbaston track, not a lot of lift, not too much assistance for the quicker bowlers once the cloud cover lifted and the sun came out. ‘A very good wicket for batting,’ is how the England quick, who dismissed KL Rahul and Nitish Kumar Reddy, put it. He foresaw help for the spinners later in the match, maybe late on day four and on day five. Amid the clamour for Bumrah’s inclusion, you could see the logic behind him not playing – in any case, it was public knowledge that he would miss two of the five Tests.

But what about Kuldeep? Why was he still warming the bench? Because India were busy hedging their bets, bolstering their batting by including seam-bowling all-rounder Nitish and spinning all-rounder Washington Sundar, both of whose primary suit is batting. Not even 835 runs could guarantee victory at Headingley; on the final day which England began needing 350, India managed only five wickets. Gill himself conceded on match-eve that a second spinner would have been handy on day five in Leeds. Wouldn’t it have then made more sense, on a pitch not too dissimilar to the one on which the first Test was played, to have the luxury of falling back on Kuldeep’s obvious expertise?

Washington has come on as a spinner, evidence of which came during his 11-wicket burst in a losing cause against New Zealand in Pune last October. But Kuldeep is a wizard, a novelty – left-arm wrist-spin is anything but commonplace in Test cricket – that can be especially impossible for the lower order to fathom. It was lower-order runs in the first innings that hurt India in Leeds, but Kuldeep isn’t just ‘The Mop’ like Josh Tongue, the English quick. He is equally adept at spinning out the specialist batters. It is impossible not to feel that India have missed the trick for a second game running.

A high-quality knock under pressure

But maybe we are getting carried away. Maybe none of these thoughts flitted through Gill’s mind when he was systematically taking England apart, not with a blazing series of pleasing strokes but through commonsense and an intuitive understanding of the game situation. He defended with compact assurance when the ball was pitched in testing areas, which was quite often. And when he felt certain that he could get to its pitch on length or account for deviation, he either moved his left foot forward to drive imperiously or his right foot back to pull and cut with authority.

With the second new ball two deliveries away, he swept Joe Root fine and then a little squarer for consecutive boundaries, the second making him only the fourth Indian after Virat Kohli, Vijay Hazare and Sunil Gavaskar to score centuries in their first two Tests as skipper. Gill now has three tons in his last three Tests against England, starting from Dharamsala in March last year. Captaincy has poked the prolific run-making beast in him, his travails outside the subcontinent are now a thing of the past. Maybe that was the trigger for his exuberant celebration. Then again, maybe it wasn’t, you know.